Today sees the launch of the my ‘new look’ Australian Radio Online website. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally here!

Australian Radio Online is a unique website that provides a one-stop point for people who want to listen to Aussie radio stations over the net. The portal was started in 2001, and has grown to be the most popular part of my website. Every day, thousands of people pay a visit, so it gives me great satisfaction to provide a service that people will appreciate.

Aside from a sleeker presentation, the new-look website has some exciting features including a new jQuery-dependent dynamic table system that allows visitors to sort radio stations on any criterion they desire. In addition, new interactive features such as a Twitter feed have been incorporated.

On a technical level, the new design represents two small milestones for me.

Firstly, Australian Radio Online is the first of my websites to abandon table-based design in favour of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Website designs based on CCS are quicker to load, easier to adjust and the CSS system provides a lot more design flexibility and consistency. I have been using CSS as a support for tables-based designs for years, but have never built an entire website with CSS-based design before. Building  a site from scratch using CSS has been very hard work, but I have learned a great deal and am confident that I can use those skills for updating other parts of my website as the need arises.

The second milestone is that the entire website is 100% compliant with the XHTML 1.0 Transitional web standard. Standards compliance ensures that websites will render correctly in as many browsers and under as many operating systems as possible. Standards compliance also ensures that visually impaired website visitors who use screen readers will be able to enjoy the website as much as everyone else.

You can access the refurbished Australian Radio Online website at http://www.adonline.id.au/radio/ If you like the website, why not subscribe to it on Twitter @AustraliaRadio.

Yesterday, the Australian Tourism Commission released their latest attempt at a commercial designed to lure the world’s tourists to Australia. Entitled There’s Nothing like Australia, it showcases some of Australia’s finest clichéd attractions and a truly awful song.

One would consider that after Where the Bloody Hell are You? and Go Walkabout, the government’s tourism agency could produce something substantially better. Alas, they’ve remained true-to-form and produced an absolute shocker of an advertisement: A tuneless parade of clichéd scenes, sedated animals and people who really can’t sing. Take a look for yourself:

The problem I have with this woeful presentation is that it appears to be so astonishingly amateurish. For starters, the lyrics to the song are poorly-written. To suggest that kangaroos are “furry things that bounce around in herds” is neither factually correct (they form mobs) nor particularly cute. And “Da-da-da-daaaaa, da-da-da-daaaa” in place of half a verse suggests that we lack eloquence or even verbal skills. Is this really the best song-writing that several million dollars can produce?

What I also dislike about this embarrassing film is the lack of any real message. Apparently Australia consists almost entirely of larrikins, some sedated animals and various Outback landscapes. There are almost no references to our vast cultural heritage including aboriginal traditional painting, stage performances, our vast music scene, our architecture or our unique sports such as Australian Rules. Even the tokenistic opera singer at the Opera House is overshadowed by a Missy Higgins look-a-like in the front row!

But finally, I think the cinematography compares poorly to the previous advertisements. Couldn’t they at least film the rowers on Melbourne’s Yarra River on a sunny day? That aside, the overall presentation isn’t especially creative and lacks the crispness that one would expect from a national tourism campaign.

The big question we have to ask is “Why are Australians so poor at marketing themselves?“

Look at our last effort: Filmed by Baz  Luhrmann, it starred a stressed American woman (played by an Australian) who is stalked by a creepy Aboriginal girl in the middle of the night:

The Walkabout campaign was regarded as a failure despite it being linked to the release of the film Australia. Tourist numbers declined, and few people understood the true message of the advertisements. (In addition, walkabout can be a racist reference to the supposed lack of discipline and work ethic that Aborigines are said to possess; they’d rather ‘go walkabout’ or wander off).

Before Go Walkabout, there was the much-criticised Where the Bloody Hell Are You? campaign that was banned in Britain and censored in other markets such as Singapore:

Whilst in Australia the word bloody is just considered course, in most English-speaking countries it is considered offensive. So whilst creating a controversy might have seemed like clever advertising tactic by media-savvy marketing boffins at the time, it backfired in most markets and tourist numbers fell.

Looking back now, Where the Bloody Hell Are You? looks like the work of a genius when compared to There’s Nothing like Australia. The music was better, there was more personality expressed, a more representative image of Australia was shown and the cinematography was polished.

So what should we do? I guess we have three options; 1. Give up and accept that Australia is ‘out of vogue’ as a holiday destination; 2. Consider asking foreigners to make our ads, since they are probably more in touch with what works than we are or 3. Consider a serious brand transformation (i.e. no more clichés and the development of a memorable slogan).

We weren’t always so poor at marketing ourselves. Despite the fact that Australians call shrimps prawns and rarely barbecue them, Throw Another Shrimp on the Barbie was a worldwide hit because it increased brand recognition and tourist numbers.

I have no idea whether this advertisement will work. And as an Australian, I am admittedly not the best person to judge. But the reception domestically hasn’t been too good thus far. But for what it’s worth, I reckon we’re going to have to do a lot better than this if we’re seriously going to get recession-affected foreigners to come to Australia for a holiday.

Today I attended the Great Moments in History sand-sculpturing event in the Melbourne suburb of Frankston, and had a great time!

^{A Spanish conquistador, made of sand.}

I’d never been to a sand-sculpting event before, although I’d seen pictures of sand-sculptures on television so I was taken aback with the beauty and detail  of the sculptures when I saw them for myself.

^{_{Workers add touches to the Sydney Opera House sand sculpture.}}

Sand sculpture is the art of making temporary artworks from sand, using just sand and water for construction and simple tools to shape the works. Each work is called a pile, and there were 18 piles at the Great Moments in History exhibition.

Organised by Sandstorm Events, the exhibition travels around various parts of the country, charging a small entry free for viewing. The show has been located in Frankston for the past few years, appearing on the foreshore every summer.

_{A tribute to ancient Egyptian society}

As the name would suggest, this year’s show depicted various moments in history, starting with the Egyptian pyramids and ending with the best inventions of the 2oth century. There were sculptures depicting the Roman, Spanish, French and British empires, the moon landing, the Crusades, the World Wars and even Barak Obama!

^{The Vietnam War, executed in sand.}

My favourite sculptures were those depicting the Spanish empire, and the Roman empire. I was also especially impressed with the Aztec temple, which stood 6 metres high!

There was an Australian sculpture, which depicted the nation’s discovery by Captain James Cook, an Aboriginal elder, kangaroos, Vegemite, a meat pie, and the winning of the Americas Cup amongst other events.

The quality and detail of the sculptures varied. Whilst the Chinese display had a beautifully detailed dragon, I felt the other components were relatively plain. There was also some technical inconsistency in the “greatest inventions” display, although the wrapped dynamite sticks were very well executed.

Local Frankston sand is not used for the sculptures as it is unsuitable for sculpture. In the case of the Great Moments in History exhibition, builders’ sand was quarried from the Graham Quarries in Langwarren, which accounts for its orangey colour.

I thoroughly recommend a visit to the Great Moments in History exhibition in Frankston. Located on the foreshore near the Kananook Creek Bridge, entry to the exhibition costs $10 for adults. A programme costs an additional 50¢.

The show will remain open until 26 April 2010.

Feathers were thoroughly ruffled yesterday when the Commonwealth Government released a report entitled The Future of Sport in Australia (also called the “Crawford Report”), which examined the government’s funding of elite sports.

Rather than supporting a funding increase, the report’s author David Crawford said the money would be better spent elsewhere, and rejected the Australian Olympic Committee’s request for an additional $100 million in funding per annum.

Predictably, it didn’t take long for a response from the President of the Australian Olympics Committee, John Coates, to crudely declare that he was “pissed off” at the report’s findings. For if there’s one faux pas in Australia, it’s to question the supremacy of sport.

Regardless of such sensibilities, I feel it’s about time we took the axe to elite sports funding in Australia.

Sport is a worthy endeavour. Participation brings considerable health and social benefits to those who engage in it’s many offerings, and elite sportsmen and women provide inspiration for people to give sports a try. Since Australia is now the world’s fattest nation, we need to do all in our power to prevent a looming health crisis.

Yet the current strategy of throwing bucket-loads of taxpayers’ money at the Australian Sports Commission clearly isn’t working in creating a leaner and fitter nation. Nor is it delivering Australia more Olympic gold. Since the 2000 Sydney Olympics, our medal count has been falling whilst at the same time we’ve collectively become fatter.

Exhibiting a vulgar form of sports blasphemy, David Crawford went as far as suggesting that Olympic gold medals are not the best way of measuring  sporting success and described Australia’s aim of being one of the “top five” Olympic nations as “unrealistic”. With comments like that, we’ll no doubt hear calls to “crucify him!” as the angry mobs coalesce!

The Australian Sports Commission was established after the 1976 Montreal Olympics where Australia didn’t win a single gold medal.

The strategy seemed to work, because in time our Olympic performance improved considerably, culminating in the 2000 Sydney Olympics where Australia won 16 gold medals. Yet gold medals come at a cost. In the 2007-8 financial year, the Australian Sports Commission received $216 million in government funding (source). The Crawford report estimated that each Olympic gold medal cost $15 million, although it was a guess because there is apparently little accounting or accountability in Australian sport.

Apparently, to suggest that funding should be cut or that athletes should actually pay for their training, is ‘un-Australian’. Why? Because apparently Australia is a “sports-loving nation” and Australians are “sports-loving people”. After all, what Australian doesn’t love his sport? Or so the myth says.

In fact, there are some of us who don’t have any interest in sports, and resent so much of our taxes being spent on people who contribute almost nothing to our nation.

Students who enrol in university, perhaps to study science, engineering, economics, medicine, law, or teaching have to pay a considerable percentage of the cost of their education. Yet when they graduate they make a considerable contribution to our society by educating our children, designing our cities, developing our medicines, helping us understand our environment, crafting our laws, securing our economy or looking after us when we’re ill. People who enter TAFE to study trades, also have to pay considerable fees.

Yet sports people, who spend their time kicking balls across fields, throwing sticks at targets, or running in circles, receive their training for free. And whilst a university student has to repay his debt after earning a paltry $21,000, a sportman can earn millions and still not pay a cent.

John Coates, chief of the AOC, described the Crawford Report as “an insult”.  At an angry press conference, he asked “Is Mr. Crawford suggesting that medals won in Beijing last year by Matthew Mitcham in diving, Steve Hooker in pole vault and Ken Wallace (kayak) meant nothing to the Australian people? Is he telling us gold medals won by the rowers and sailors in Beijing meant nothing?”.

To suggest that offending Olympic athletes is sufficient reason not to cut the sports budget is ludicrous, whilst Coates’ labelling of the report as “un-Australian” smacks of desperation.

In 2007, the Commonwealth Government slashed $63.4 million from the CSIRO budget. One could call the CSIRO the “Olympic team of Australian science”, as our nation’s premier research organisation. As a result of the cuts, more than 100 jobs were lost and two centres closed.

As a scientist, was I offended? Who cares!

My emotional response (or that of those affected) is irrelevant to a discussion about whether it was a good decision or not. The effect on the nation, supported by data, should be the primary influence on any non-welfare public financial debate.

It is well time that athletes were compelled to pay for their training. It is also time that we dropped our obsession with Olympic gold medals. Instead, we should re-invest our tax dollars into community sport, so that ‘ordinary Australians’ can participate, and gain tangible health and social benefits from their activities.

Winning Olympic gold might momentarily bring a warm feeling to our hearts, but aside from its role as popular entertainment, neither the Olympics nor elite sport in general contribute much to Australian society.

If holding such a view makes me un-Australian, so be it.

The calling of names will never convince me that sport is deserving of such generous quantities of taxpayer dollars, whilst our hospitals are under-funded, our trains arrive late and our poor sleep on the streets.

Odd as it may seem, a sandwich board outside the Vaucluse Hospital in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick today was advertising cigarettes for sale from the hospital’s kiosk.

I didn’t go in to see whether they’d actually sell me some cigarettes. Needless to say, I think think this shows the hospital in a very bad light.